This article explores the factors that influence pro-poor commercial management of non-timber forest products (NTFPs) in 3 community forest user groups (CFUGs) in the Dolakha district in Nepal. Management of NTFPs through CFUGs is an important poverty-reduction strategy in rural Nepal. National policy documents encourage management of NTFPs by CFUGs for commercial purposes, particularly by involving marginalized communities. It is therefore important to understand the existing mechanisms of their involvement. We followed a case study approach and collected data through key informant interviews, focus group discussions, formal and informal discussions, participant observations, and study of secondary data, such as the constitutions and operational plans of the CFUGs. Because institutional arrangements varied across the 3 study CFUGs, the ability of marginalized people to benefit from the commercial management of NTFPs also differed. Results suggest that the involvement of external agencies, and the consequent conducting of NTFP-based pro-poor programs, positively influences commercial management of NTFPs and minimizes elite domination. Likewise, inclusion of representatives of marginalized people in the CFUG executive committees empowers them to lobby with external agencies for pro-poor programs. Furthermore, the geographic location of the community forest limits the involvement of external agencies and marketing of NTFPs. Therefore, because members of CFUGs in remote areas are heavily dependent on collection and sale of NTFPs for their livelihoods, we suggest increasing the focus of external agencies in such areas and including marginalized people in CFUG executive committees.

This case study explored forest resource-use patterns to understand villagers' dependency on forests in four temperate villages situated in two forested sites in Garhwal Himalaya: Mandal and Khalla in the Mandal area, Chamoli District, and Chaundiyar and Dikholi in the Chaurangikhal area, Uttarkashi District. Although the literacy rate in the villages was quite high, due to lack of employment opportunities people still invariably depend on forests for their livelihood. In all the study villages more than 75% of fodder and fuelwood were extracted from the forest. The pressure exerted by human and bovine populations, coupled with unsustainable management policies, has resulted in the destruction of forest cover and ecological degradation. Agriculture (which is 70% rainfed in the Mandal area and 90% rainfed in Chaurangikhal) and employment as laborers were the main occupations of people in the study areas; in addition, remittance income (8.6% in the Mandal area and 21.3% in Chaurangikhal) and dairy faming accounted for a major portion of total household income. The study revealed a positive relationship between income and livestock population (0.995), which reveals the strong role of animal husbandry in the rural economy. The equally positive relationship between income and fodder consumption (0.930) can be attributed to extraction of large quantities of fodder to sustain dairy farming for commercial purposes. The correlation between income and fuelwood consumption was found to be negative (−0.882), the likely reason being poor economic conditions, leading to dependency on the forest for fuelwood as a free source of energy.

La Sepultura Biosphere Reserve—created in 1995 in Chiapas, Mexico—is well known for its biodiversity. Its buffer zone, harboring the upper “Tablón” river basin, has been intensively managed by peasants for 48 years. We carried out interviews with cattle producers at the Los Ángeles ejido, coupled with field surveys of vegetation presence, to determine the nature and allocation of different vegetation associations and their relation to indicators of tree regeneration (sapling presence). Our data showed that 96% of the producers surveyed owned areas with open pastures, and 83% owned at least 1 patch of forested pastures where cattle browse. For oak-forested pastures, the results suggest a trend of high sapling presence with high tree cover. In contrast, for deciduous pastures, the results suggest a trend of high sapling presence with intermediate tree cover. These results are consistent with the hypothesis that woody vegetation within grazing areas may facilitate natural tree recruitment around reserves. Furthermore, these vegetation cover results suggest that within the pasturelands found today in the Los Ángeles ejido, some ranchers may be inadvertently conducting practices that are consistent with agro-silvo-pastoral systems.

This study examined the main factors affecting forest cover changes in Kabaung Reserved Forest, where selective logging has been carried out. Change detection was performed based on analysis of Landsat images taken in January 1989, November 2000, and January 2003. We used a combination of supervised classification and normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) image-differencing methods to detect the selective logging area; a chi-square test confirmed the effectiveness of this method. Analysis of the spatial distribution pattern of forest cover changes pointed to selective logging, dam construction, shifting cultivation, and teak plantation operations as the factors influencing forest cover changes in the logging compartments. Illegal logging was a possible process of forest cover change in easily accessible nonlogging compartments. Regarding deforestation, intensive felling before dam construction was the main factor among the above-mentioned four. This study suggests the need for further development of regular assessment and monitoring of forest cover changes in the Kabaung Reserved Forest to examine and protect this natural teak-bearing area against forest reduction.

Constructing climate layers is more difficult and important in mountainous areas as a result of sparse meteorological stations and complex topography. This requires a 2-stage process: quality control of meteorological data and spatial interpolation of climate data. For this article, unscreened metadata and observed data were collected from all stations in Taiwan for the period 1961–2002. A quality-control procedure based on a geographic information system (GIS) allowed us to reject 13.5% of stations because of missing or erroneous metadata and filter out 8.3% of the observed data because of extreme errors or unreasonable temporal sequence and spatial patterns. After applying the quality-control procedure, the monthly mean temperature and total monthly precipitation were calculated as spatial interpolation sampling points. We evaluated the performance of 6 kriging-based spatial interpolation methods with regard to their errors by cross-validation. For interpolating the monthly mean temperature, the strong relation between temperature and elevation led us to favor modified residual kriging. For interpolating the total monthly precipitation, log-transformed kriging was chosen for practical reasons (steadier and simpler). We compared our product layers with pre-existing climate layers. The overall spatial patterns of these layers were similar, except for certain extremes in the mountains. Consequently, the GIS-based approaches presented here could help in rapid construction of adequate climate layers for regions with unconfirmed data.

This article highlights the economic and ecological value of the water resource systems of Ecuador's páramo and montane forest region and gives a description, based on a survey of recent literature, of the mechanisms controlling the rainfall–runoff process and how changes in land use alter the transformation. The review reveals that available understanding is partial, the result of individual and isolated research efforts, and is hindered by a lack of long-term complete and consistent data sets. Available knowledge does not yet permit up- and downscaling of findings. The article concludes by (1) citing some of the major gaps that impede hydrological understanding of the tropical Andean ecosystems and (2) proposing recommendations to speed up understanding and development of policies and measures to guarantee ecologically safe and sustainable development of the fragile water-based ecosystems of Ecuador's tropical Andean region.

CONDESAN (Consortium for the Sustainable Development of the Andean Eco-region) is a 16-year-old consortium that offers an innovative form of organization and promotes horizontal integration among nongovernmental organizations, universities, national and international research centers, and governmental agencies from the Andean region. We are innovative and horizontal as we are able to cooperate with different types of actors—scientists, politicians, people from rural communities, among others—who participate and interact as actors with the same rights. Our aim is the sustainable development of the Andean region (mountains).